Is Image Alt Text A Yandex Ranking Factor?

TLDR: Yes!

In Yandex’s documentation, they describe image metadata as being one of a number of ranking factors taken into account by the search engine.

You don’t need to put all the site’s or page’s keywords in the alt attribute, only the ones that describe the image. This helps the robot find the most appropriate image, and makes it easier for Yandex users to find it in search results and get to your site. It is not advised to leave the alt attribute empty.

The types of image metadata important to Yandex are:

  • The text included within the image alt attribute
  • The text included in the image title attribute
  • The name of the image file itself

These factors alone can enable an image to rank for a query, related to the image itself, even if it’s not present as plain text on the page wherein the image is located. the alt and title attributes are the most universal, and Yandex recommends that they are always specified.